Industry Expert John Michael McLaughlin Pens Novel on Challenges of Change in Public Education

Share Article

John Michael McLaughlin has been involved in entrepreneurial efforts to improve schooling since the mid-1970s. Now in his first novel, The Last Year of the Season, his approachable characters confront the challenges of improving public education.

Sioux Falls, SD (PRWEB)May 15, 2014

A simple story based in small town Minnesota has drawn acclaim from across the country. Two former state commissioners of education have praised the book as entertaining and spot on. Lisa Graham Keegan, former Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Arizona says, “The book captures the state of American public schooling.” Jim Horne, Former Commissioner of Education in Florida says, the book provides, “A powerful plot and a great political message.”

“Sometimes fiction can illuminate realities better than public policy or legislative advocacy. My goal with the book,” McLaughlin notes, “is to entertain and to tell a story that reveals the complex confluence of education, politics, and business that influence public schooling.”

As the school board of fictional Saint Luke, Minnesota considers whether to allow a technology-based teaching company to do a pilot program in the high school, lines are drawn about issues of job security, Wall Street greed, and the role of football in holding together America’s schools.

McLaughlin founded Benton Hall Academy in Nashville in 1977, was a tenured associate professor of educational administration at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota, and the publisher of The Education Industry Report.